Spring Clean Your Health + Wellness
Spring is riiight around the corner and I could not be more thrilled. I am ready for more sunshine, longer days, flowers, and planting a garden- and with all that, the boost of energy that comes once winter is behind me for a bit.
One thing that I always am eager to tackle is spring cleaning. There is something that is so rejuvenating and inspiring to me about cleaning out all the old stuff and making more, intentional space in our homes and bodies. Not only that, but research shows that cluttered spaces actually increase our stress hormones, decrease our quality of sleep, and have negative effects on our mental and emotional health.
But not only is it important to spring clean our environment, but you can use the same strategy when tackling your health.
What habits, hobbies, or rituals do you have that are no longer serving your health and well-being?
Where to Start?
As always, I am a big advocate for taking a personal inventory of where things are at currently. Pull out a sheet of paper or journal and answer some of these questions:
How are my energy levels? Do I feel like I need caffeine to make it through the afternoon?
How am I sleeping?
Am I eating primarily whole foods, or am I regularly eating out or consuming processed foods?
What symptoms am I struggling with? Or maybe what symptoms have I been ignoring?
How are my stress levels? Mental health? Emotional health?
You cannot make any progress with anything if you don't have a firm understanding of where you are at currently. It’s also important to know where you’re wanting to go so that you have direction. Next, use your journaling space to set some health goals and intentions. These questions may help to spark some inspiration and motivation:
What do I believe true wellness looks like?
If I did/felt _____________, I would feel like I am making progress in my health.
In the past, my mental/ emotional/ physical health was best when I was doing _____________.
Once you have gone through this journaling exercise, you will have a much better grasp of where your health currently stands, but also where you want to go and what needs to be prioritized. Maybe you need to focus on hydration, or physical fitness, or making sure you are balancing your blood sugar by eating more frequently. Maybe your relationships are struggling, or you have financial strain affecting your mental health- wellness truly is holistic and different areas of your life can play a role on how your mind and body are able to function and perform.
Holistic wellness includes physical, nutritional, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, financial, and environmental health. Think of each of these different categories as a pillar underneath a roof. If one pillar is weaker than the others, the roof will not be well-supported. Balance is required for them to co-exist and get the job done optimally- holding up the roof. Or if you bring the analogy back to your holistic health- you are able to show up optimally and actually thrive when all the pillars of holistic wellness are balanced and healthy.
The next part of this post is broken down into each of the 8 pillars of holistic health with recommendations on how you can “spring clean” these areas and make lasting improvements towards your overall wellness!
Physical
Our bodies have physical needs to function appropriately- food, water, quality sleep, and movement.
Spring cleaning this area may look like being more intentional with the quality of food and water you are drinking. These two areas alone can make huge impacts on your overall wellness. I always recommend to eat food that is as whole as possible.
What do I mean by whole food? When you look at the ingredient list it will be made up of food that is as close to its’s natural source as possible without a bunch of extra additives, preservatives, or artificial ingredients. For example, if you are making a sandwich for lunch look for ingredient lists that are close to these:
bread: flour, water, salt
sliced turkey breast: turkey, water, salt (one of my favorite brands of lunch meat is True Story- this is actually the ingredient list from their packaged turkey breast that I recently bought)
cheese: milk, salt, cultures, rennet
mayo: Avocado Oil, Organic Eggs, Organic Egg Yolks, Organic Vinegar, Sea Salt, Organic Rosemary Extract (this is the Primal Kitchen Avocado Oil Mayo that I get from Thrive Market)
It does not have to look exactly like this, but i’m sure you notice the theme- whole foods with minimal ingredients 👏
Next up- SLEEP QUALITY.
This is such an important piece of physical wellness. Your bodies literally cannot heal if you are not getting adequate quality sleep. Sleep is also when your brain sorts and processes information from the day, your body removes toxins, repairs cells, and your immune system works to fight off inflammation and heal injury. Some research-backed ways to improve your sleep quality include
creating a bed time routine- this allows your mind and body to anticipate sleep and your body will start secreting hormones to help you fall asleep and actually sleep better
have a dark and cool sleeping environment
limit bright lights in the evening, specifically blue light- this means turning off the tv and putting away the phone a couple of hours before bedtime. To help implement this my husband and I actually bought an old school alarm clock and charge our phones outside of the bedroom now! I also traded my late night netflix- binge for reading (most of the time 😅)
Limit caffeine in the afternoon and evenings
Nutritional
While physical health we talked about the quality of our food, this area of wellness is actually taking that one step deeper. Are you giving your body the nutrients it needs to function optimally?
Are you balancing your MACROnutrients- fats, carbs, and protein?
Are you getting adequate MICROnutrients (minerals and vitamins) into your diet?
Are you eating enough for your body and energy expenditure? Remember, if you have a high-stress life, high-energy job, are pregnant or breastfeeding your body needs more energy. And for you to do any of those things well, you need the nutritional support!
Focusing on whole foods will help you to get more micronutrients into your diet because they aren’t filled with “empty calories”. Some foods that are especially nutrient-dense that I love to include in my diet are
organ meats (if you are new to this check out my post on eating more liver)
leafy green vegetables- Kale is one of my favorites! Make sure to massage it well before consuming to help it be more easily digested! (if you are sensitive to raw leafy greens and they cause indigestion or bloating, trying sautéing them or cooking them in bone broth for easier digestion)
eggs- such a great source of health fats, protein, vitamin A, choline, iron, B vitamins
Emotional/ Mental Health
Your emotional health not only includes how happy or sad you are, but how you feel that you are coping with stressful situations.
This is another area where journaling can be really helpful! Journaling can allow you to reflect on and process your feelings. This is also where therapy or seeking sound counsel from friends or family can be beneficial. Some other ways to spring clean your emotional and mental health include:
doing a social media detox- research has shown negative effects on your mental and emotional health with social media use
journaling
therapy or seeing a counselor- there are often free or low-cost options in every city that you can find online
meditation or breath work- one of my favorite recommendations for people just getting started with meditation is to find a free, guided meditation on YouTube.
Another good place to start is a simple exercise called “box breathing”.
First inhale for 4 seconds
hold the breath for 4 seconds
exhale for 4 seconds
wait for 4 seconds before inhaling again and starting the cycle over
Social
Take a look at your relationships: marriage, friends, family, coworkers, children.
Are you surrounded by healthy relationships that are making you feel uplifted, encouraged, and supported? Or do you always feel emotionally and mentally burdened after spending time with someone? Not everyone in your life is going to be encouraging and supportive and fill your tank, and that is okay. But it is important to be mindful of the people who don’t.
How can you set healthy boundaries to protect your health and well being?
Some ideas to spring clean your relationships and social wellness:
set aside intentional quality time with those that matter to you
reach out to a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while
practice setting boundaries on less-healthy relationship, and honoring your health by enforcing them
Spiritual
We are all spiritual beings and have a need to engage with that part of ourselves, and yet the way we do this is all different and personal. Even for those within a similar belief system, their way of maintaining their spiritual health may be different- some may feel more connected by prayer, while others do through worship, or meditation.
Check in with how your soul feels. Here are some journal prompts that may give you direction at improving your health in this area.
Do you feel your life has purpose and meaning beyond yourself? What is that?
What is the driving force of your values and morals?
If you have religious beliefs, have you been honoring or neglecting those?
Do you feel overall peace and joy in your life?
Intellectual
When was the last time you learned something new? Not only does learning something new give you new knowledge, experience, or a new skill, but it has also been shown to build self confidence and overall happiness.
For spring cleaning your intellectual wellness instead of giving you a prompt, I want to give you a challenge.
Use the next few months to learn something new. Maybe there is a craft you have been wanting to try? or a topic that has recently been sparking your interest and curiosity? Or maybe you’ve been wanting to master a new skill?
Some things I have recently been learning and loving:
maintaining and cooking with a sourdough starter
reading and learning about different ancestral diet theories
learning more about minimalist living and how to implement that more into my life and home
Financial
I think this is a very often forgot about component to holistic wellness. I also think most people try to ignore this area because there is a lack on confidence or direction. Growing up, my parents were always very open about finances and talking to us about saving, investing, and giving with our money and I feel like that gave me a really strong foundation going into how I manage my money as an adult.
If you don’t have that background, I strongly encourage you to start looking into some basics about finances! Money causes people so much stress and anxiety and I believe there is so much we can do to set ourselves up for success in this area!
Personal finance truly is so personal so there is no one size fits all approach. If this is a space where you need a bit of spring cleaning, I strongly encourage you to start paying attention to your spending habits. Once you know where your money is going you can create a budget and be more intentional about saving, investing, and giving to things that are important to you!
Environmental
Last but not least- your environment. This can be a fairly broad topic so I am going to break it into two categories: your living space, and your toxin burden from your environment.
Spring cleaning your space:
You know those places in your home that end up being a catch-all for everything else? Start there. For me it is our hallway closet and the closet in my husband’s office. When there is something that doesn’t have it’s own designated spot of “home”, it usually ends up in one of these closets.
I usually start cleaning things out by taking everything out. Then, I only put back the things I want to keep, are important, or I have a use for. Everything else, I feel or donate. These organization bins have been a life saver at helping me to organize these spaces.
Minimizing your toxin burden:
This is an area that I think can get a bad wrap in the wellness space… it sometimes feels like everything is “toxic” and harmful. That is not my stance and I don’t want you to feel that way. My approach is minimizing toxins where we can so that our bodies can focus on more important things than filtering all that junk out. But it is not supposed to be fear inducing at all! Instead, it should just be something you are mindful of and try to make the “better” choice for where you are at in your life.
There are a few great places to start if you are wanting to minimize the toxins in your environment:
ditch the plastics for food storage! Heat and plastic are not friends and are not supportive to your body at all. When plastics are heated they leach chemicals and microplastics into your food. An easy fix for this is replacing your tupperware with glass containers and your plastic water bottles with a metal or glass bottle.
say bye to artificial fragrance- when “fragrance” is listed on the ingredient list, that can include hundreds of different chemicals. Studies have shown that some of these chemicals can be linked to cancer, endocrine disorders, fertility issues, respiratory problems, migraines, skin irritation, and pollution. It can be really har knowing what to avoid and what not to.
Swap out your deodorant to a more non-toxic option!
A resource I often use is an app called Think Dirty by the Environmental Working Group. You can look up hair, skin, beauty, and household products and it has a given score to each product 0-10. 0 is considered a “clean” product, while 10 would be something containing concerning ingredients that you should avoid. My favorite part is that you can see which ingredients caused the bad score and whyyy. 👏
If you made it this far, you are well on your way to improving your holistic health this spring! There are so many things you can do to start improving your health and sometimes it can be tricky to know where to begin. I think this list is a great place to start and build a firm foundation for your health and wellness. Another post I have is of 20 free things you can do to improve your wellness today!
Improving your health does not have to be hard, and many times we can make a ton of progress by working on these foundational, basic steps.
If you feel like you are in a spot where you have these basics down and are still seeing areas that need improvement, it may be time to work with a health coach! As a health coach, I give you a customized plan for you specific health goals and concerns. This means we talk about your health history, what you want to improve, and strategic ways you can achieve your health goals!
If you have been thinking of working with a health coach or want more information, check out my coaching page. I’d love to chat with you!